Singapore state visit

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Singapore state visit on November 21st – in the attendance of His Majesty the King.

Arjan van Timmeren, Peter Mooij and Foteini Setaki will be representing AMS Institute at a special pop-up expo that will be hosted at Prodock. Our contributions to the program include:

Converting Wastewater into Composites (WASCOM) – By Peter Mooij,researcher at TU Delft and Research Fellow at AMS Institute (one of the nominees for ‘Best Dutch young researcher’ 2018)

In a circular society waste streams are efficiently recycled and upcycled. This also holds true for waste streams from a wastewater treatment plant. Two main waste streams from a wastewater treatment plant are cellulose fibres and a class of biopolymers known as alginate-like exopolysaccharides (ALE). It is common practice in the Netherlands to digest or incinerate these streams. However, these streams can also be used to produce a high-value lightweight bio-composite material. Cellulose and ALE can be combined to yield a lightweight bio-composite material that can be applied in the transport or building sector.

The aim of the WASCOM project is to create this high-quality, lightweight bio-composite. The project is a collaboration between Delft University of Technology, ChainCraft, NPSP, Waternet and the AMS Institute. Delft University of Technology is the leading expert in research on biopolymers and wastewater treatment, Waternet works on the recovery of cellulose fibre-rich toilet paper from wastewater, ChainCraft researches the extraction of the ‘glue’ ALE from the bacteria from a wastewater treatment plant and NPSP combines the cellulose fibre with the ALE into a high value light weight bio-composite.

As 25% of the city of Amsterdam consists of water surface, Amsterdam offers the ideal environment to expand its current infrastructure with the deployment of autonomous vessels, alleviating pressure from the relatively small but busy city centre, and restoring the historic purpose of the Amsterdam canals: providing access to the inner city. Roboat is the first research project where the high-accuracy autonomous techniques challenged by the complex urban dynamics of a city like Amsterdam. Roboat is a collaboration between AMS Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Gemeente Amsterdam & Waternet.

Roboat researches five areas of application/business cases: (1) household waste collection in the inner-city, (2) autonomous transport of people in the city of Amsterdam, (3) distribution of food/goods within the city centre, (4) self-assembling water-infrastructures (such as temporary bridges) and (5) options for automated sensing of water quality and other urban and environmental variables. The latter in close collaboration with Waternet. The results of the project can be applied worldwide in other water-rich cities (70% of populated urban areas / 80% of GDP).

At Prodock AMS Institute will show the Roboat prototypes (scaled) that are designed in the first two years of research and augmented reality (AR) models to demonstrate the use cases of household waste collection and transport of people. The pop up expo is supported with photo and video materials.

Every day, a huge amount of plastic waste is generated in cities. It is even estimated that plastics represent about 25% of the total volume of domestic waste in Amsterdam. What if we could reduce this waste stream of discarded materials by recycling household plastics waste and transforming them into valuable products with 3D-printing based entirely on this waste (so not ‘just’ a part of the product). Studying how to turn plastic waste into a strong printing material was an important part of the research. Local plastic waste streams were examined and assessed to define their utilization patterns and recycling potential. 3D Printing in the Circular City is a stimulus project of AMS Institute and the result of the collaboration between AMS Institute, AEB, Aectual, and the Municipality of Amsterdam.

At Prodock she will explain more about the different phases of recycling the materials, demonstrated with the materials that are the result of each phase of the process, including the 3D printed results. The demonstration is supported with a short project video.